At a quarter after nine, Mitch’s Gang ambled onstage, followed by the man himself. I’d seen Mitch earlier at the merch table before the opening set talking with someone and now he was onstage with the other five members of the band. Making this a six-piece for this evening and obviously capable of doing the Let’s Active catalog justice…and then some. The male players had coordinated their outfits to a white jeans/black shirt vibe. This evening The Gang would be Jon Heames [a member of the “Every Dog Has His Day” band] on drums, Michael Slawter on rhythm guitar, and Shawn Lynch on bass.

Mitch was playing a plethora of guitars during the evening and his guitar tech [among other duties], Jeffrey Dean Foster had his work cut out for him this evening. The guitars were a mixture of acoustics and electrics, even for Michael Slawter on rhythm guitar. Ms. Tammy Easter, who had been running merch earlier, was singing backup vocals and played loose bits of percussion as well.

They opened with the punchy title track to “Every Dog Has His Day” and afterward Mitch spoke with the crowd for the first and certainly not the last time that evening. He introduced the players onstage right up front, taking me by surprise since this usually happens either right before the encore or during it. He also explained the “rules” for the evening. They were going to play from the albums in reverse order, meaning that “Every Dog Has His Day” would be cherry picked first, followed by “Big Plans For Everybody” and then “Cypress” with “Afoot” material closing the show.

I was pleased to hear that Mitch picked “I Feel Funny” off of “Dog” to play second and I was not expecting him to perform any tracks sung by the women in the band lineups, and welcomed “Mr. Fool” into the set!

Though I still had memories of the furious rocker “Ten Layers Down” from the 1989 gig I saw, that was not on the books for this evening, but fortunately, “Bad Machinery” was! Mitch also took the opportunity to let the audience know that they band were playing “New Wave Sets” this evening. There would be two short sets [always keep ’em wanting more] with a tiny break in between. When an artist I respect actually uses the term “New Wave” onstage…47 years after the fact, it can only be hugely endearing to me.

Then they dug into my favorite album, “Big Plans For Everybody.” First up was the vivid “Talking With Myself” and the loose-limbed rocker “Last Chance Town” was next in the chute. We tend to think of Let’s Active in terms of the songwriting chops that Mitch [and his occasional co-writers] brought to the material, but the crux of the matter was that it was his guitar prowess that really made the case for these songs on the live stage! Seeing the full caliber of the material on this show reminded me that there was a reason why Robert Plant was a Let’s Active fan in the 80s! Mitch took only the best sparks of inspiration from Jimmy Page and dropped them into his songs while avoiding all of Page’s pitfalls.

The first set capped with the 70s callback “Fell,” whose guitar riff hook nagged at my skull…what Top 40 song of my youth was that song’s chord sequence redolent of? Maybe Climax’s “Precious And Few?” No! It was the distinctive guitar riff from Seals And Crofts “Summer Breeze!!” If that was the one [it sure sounded like it] then he really rehabilitated it magnificently! I was busy singing along to this one when the first set ended after only seven songs. He had not been kidding! But all of my fave rave cuts from “Big Plans For Everybody” had not been in evidence here this evening.

Following a break that was maybe long enough to get a swig of water, the deeper, older half of the set was about to manifest in record time. This time the “great leap forward” of the “Cypress” album would be getting the love! At the time “Cypress” knocked me for a loop moving far from the ginchy Pop sound of “Afoot,” but with a few spins, the added complexity of the songs and arrangements normalized themselves to me and we could tell that Mitch Easter had the goods to really achieve greatness in this dirty Rock biz.

The sublime “Waters Part” opened the second half of the show and it had been one of the several promo 12″ singles that I’d seen in the bins back in the day. It’s difficult to believe that there seemingly were no 7″ singles from this most adroit of Pop bands in America! The mighty interwebs tell me that only “In Little Ways” got a UK single release on 7/12 inch formats as a Let’s Active single that one could buy in record stores! Madness! Especially when taking the smoking hot coda of “Waters Part” into account.

The sublime “Ornamental” one of my favorite deep cuts from “Cypress” followed next and gave Ms. Easter a chance to really add some of those effulgent backing vocals that set up the song’s gorgeous counter melody. The chiming power of “Co-Star” would be the final song from “Cypress” this evening. The band next moved to the EP that started it all, “Afoot.” I was excited to hear that the quirkiest cut on the disc, “The Leader Of Men,” would be played this evening. I didn’t see that one coming but was happy to be in the wrong. This song had been the early outlier to the fact that Mitch Easter was happy not to be relegated to the “three chord wonder” school of New Wave.

Then the early hit that let the world know that Mitch Easter was here and that he was capable of more than just producing R.E.M. records lit the stage. “Every Word Means No” was a powerfully Pop opening salvo to a music career, though the prehistory of The Sneakers was still shrouded in the mists of time back in the early 80s with no reissues happening until much later. This song was still a lesson in hooks as written by a master.

We stopped to catch our breath with the winsome melancholy of “Edge Of The World,” before turning the energy up for the euphoric pop of “In Between.” A song with expertly placed “ooh-la-la-las” that knew when to hold back and when go for the throat. And with that the vibrant fourteen song set was done! There was so much more that could have been packed into the show but as The Poet has claimed, brevity is the soul of wit.

The audience in the full house clamored for more and it wasn’t more than two swigs of water before the band came back for as sweet an encore as I could have hoped for at this show. The presence of a slide on Mitch’s finger alerted me to the rip-roaring “Route 67” as the first song up and we were not disappointed! This one was the outlier to nowhere that closed out “Big Plans For Everybody” in the most incendiary fashion imaginable as Easter tore into those slide solos with plenty of verve. I was most impressed by bassist Lynch intoning the title “Route 67” in a basso voice at the exact correct moment while Ms. Easter added the requisite floor tom [not a sample this time!] to the song. Bliss!

Next came the track that now vied with “In Little Ways” for my favorite Let’s Active song of all, so you know that it’s a great one! And that song was the powerful melancholy of “Badger,” but the setup for this had the band shifting into a radically different configuration for this evening’s performance. The full band came upstage and the four players [even drummer Heames] were each tuning up acoustics while Mitch had the electric guitar; making sarcastic quips like “we’re going Bluegrass” as the players were taking the time to get settled in. But not before Easter goosed them with a good natured “this is where you start to say something like ‘boys…’ and with that they counted into a performance of “Badger” that was worth the wait!

This song really takes me places every time that I hear it, but I’ve never heard it this magnificently before. If a picture is worth a thousand words, I’m going to give you all a rest from my blabbering with the video below. Suffice to say that Easter nailed that amazing solo in the song’s coda…right into my heart.

What Let’s Active song could possibly follow this one but the splendid glory of “In Little Ways?” Yet I was taken unaware as I expected someone to move to the keyboard for this song, and they launched into it with no one manning the keys. The frissons happened even without piano. I swear that everyone around me was singing the backing vocals to this one as Easter’s clean treble tone cut straight to the heart of the song and he proceeded to recast the climactic piano solo in the coda on his guitar instead. And then that was a wrap! The magic of Let’s Active was back in the bottle until next time.

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As with the opening set, the sound mix this evening was perfection! Full of clarity and punch with nothing harsh entering our ears. And our viscera were not feeling every drumbeat. Perhaps I could have gone without attenuating earplugs, but with my deafness, I don’t take any chances. But the songbook of Mitch Easter cries out to be heard. The gent is like the Brian Wilson of The Piedmont and the occasion of the belated appearance of the Let’s Active catalog to streaming means that perhaps it won’t be so criminally underrated. After all, you cannot love what you cannot hear. And if the presence of some under 40s here is anything to take note of, then the future ahead may be brighter than I’m ready to give it credit for.

And not just the music catalog is back. The launch of the new Let’s Active website also happened in tandem with this reissue campaign, and gloryoski… the webmaster there has already linked to the first half of this posting [in the Press page] …even as I’m writing the second half! So maybe this wonderful show was not merely a one-off, but perhaps a new beginning for Let’s Active? It would be a shame not to share these magnificent tunes with a wider than local audience! At the very least one may buy the merch that was at the show for the same fine prices. Those lovely posters, t-shirts, and I’ve got to love the “New Wave Mitch” badges featuring the barely post-pubescent Easter looking pretty Nick Lowe. DJ hit that button!

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